Should Catholic Hospitals Sterilize Their Patients?

The answer is no, and neither should any other kind of hospital.

In the news right now, the ACLU is suing a Catholic hospital in Michigan for declining to sterilize a woman who is requesting a tubal ligation. Earlier this year, a Catholic hospital in California caved to ACLU pressure and decided to go ahead and sterilize a patient. The ACLU’s campaign has been building for several years, triggered by the number of mergers in which a Catholic hospital system acquired a previously secular institution.

Why the conflict?

At the heart of the lawsuits is a fundamentally incompatible view of morality. In the prevailing secular culture, one of two conditions describes the moral climate:

Sterilization is not regarded as an immoral procedure (typically: so long as it is chosen by the individual, though some hold that there exists a right to sterilize those who cannot consent for themselves). This is the view held by most non-Catholic Christians, even if they do hold to objective morality in other areas.
No action is considered categorically immoral. One weighs the costs and benefits, and chooses the course of action that seems most promising. Note how even actions like killing one’s own child are considered acceptable so long as the context matches societal custom.

Thus the ACLU stands with the wider society in viewing sterilization as an action of no particular moral consequence, merely a question of prudential judgment.

Catholics, in contrast, hold fast to the reality that intentional sterilization is gravely immoral.

What is the Catholic teaching about sterilization?

There are two related concepts that inform us on this question:

To intentionally choose to injure, mutilate, or dismember any part of the human body is an evil act.
It is acceptable to remove or incapacitate a part of the body as an unwanted side effect of treating a proportionately serious health condition.

For example:

It would be wrong to amputate your hand because you were just tired of using it all the time.
It would be acceptable to amputate because you had a deadly cancer and amputation was the only way to prevent the cancer from spreading.
It would not be acceptable to amputate because you had a sprained thumb, even though amputation is in fact a way to cause you not to have a sprained thumb anymore.

It is not sufficient that the drastic measure be considered a possible “treatment” for a given medical condition. It has to be an appropriate treatment given the seriousness of the condition.

With regard to the reproductive system, the same rules apply. If you have testicular cancer, removing the diseased body part is a reasonable treatment option to consider. But we don’t just remove testicles because we’ve decided we don’t want them anymore.

The same applies to the female reproductive system. We might remove or modify a diseased organ if it poses a danger such that the risk of not operating is greater than the risk of operating. Any resulting sterility would be an unwanted side effect of the life-protecting intervention.

We cannot, however, invent a “need” to remove or disable an organ that is not causing any harm where and how it lies.

Will You Explode if You Don’t Have Sex?

Now going more deeply into the debate: The trouble with sex organs is that their purpose is to procreate.

The view of the wider culture is that sex organs are there for our pleasure. We are to use them freely however we please, and their reproductive function is a bit of a side job. Thus sterilization is regarded as simply the official dismissal of a guest who’s outstayed her welcome.

The moral view is exactly the opposite: Your reproductive organs are there for the purpose of reproducing. Sexual pleasure has its place in married life, but it’s not king. If you are able to conceive, that’s not a biological failure, it’s a success — even if, therefore, you need refrain from intercourse because you have serious reasons to avoid pregnancy.

Thus the moral response to health problems (or other situations) in which a future pregnancy is not wanted is straightforward: Refrain from intercourse. You don’t have to have sex. Might not be your first choice course of action, but you’ll make it. It’ll be okay.

(See below for links on this topic, which is huge.)

Why is Catholic Teaching Suddenly Such a Surprise?

One of the reasons this is suddenly such an explosive issue is that Catholic hospitals have a lousy track record for following Catholic teaching. Here’s the abstract of a study evaluating the prevalence of sterilizations performed in Catholic hospitals. Here is the detailed data, but note that the study was of a sample – not the entire population of all Catholic hospitals. (Thus you might not see your local hospital on the list, simply because it was not part of the study sample.)

The ACLU is up in arms because Catholics are taking over medical care (not really — but in certain markets, yes, no one else is willing to deal with the lousy margins). The dog that didn’t bark was the complete lack of outcry as these mergers took place. There were no pickets and protests because “everybody knows” that Catholics withhold services that other people consider part of the drinking water.

There is simply no gossip. You can live in one of the most historically anti-Catholic states in the union, home to Catholic hospital systems in all three of its major cities, and none of the locals have a word of complaint about how you just can’t get the care you want from those Catholics with their backwards morality. This in a place where people routinely chat with strangers about their vasectomy or why they are “done.”

Catholic medical care and sterilization are both ubiquitous, and yet no one — no one — ever mentions that the one is incompatible with the other. It is a suspicious silence.

Should We Just Chop Off Our Catholic Parts?

The answer is not to cave to secular pressure. The answer is to put your Catholic back on, as a growing number of bishops are doing.

It is tempting to respond to our opponents by saying, “Oh, there are plenty of other places you can get that thing done to you.” It’s true enough, but that attitude amounts to tacit approval. We don’t do that thing, but Mr. Google can find you someone who does.

Intentional sterilization, even in the hard cases, is bad for you. It’s bad for the whole you, body and soul. You aren’t a sex object. You aren’t an animal incapable of controlling yourself. You are made for something much greater.

And the Catholic Church, including our hospitals, is made for something much greater than gratifying the base urges of the secular establishment.

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